


Safekeeper

by youaremarvelous



Category: Promare (2019)
Genre: Angst, Bigotry & Prejudice, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Injury, M/M, Post-Canon, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-20
Updated: 2019-12-20
Packaged: 2020-12-27 02:56:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 11,445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21111536
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/youaremarvelous/pseuds/youaremarvelous
Summary: In the wake of Foresight's defeat, Lio realizes how naive they were to think the Promare's departure would mean the restoration of peace. He's determined to fix it, even if it means volunteering for a one-man suicide mission.





	1. Chapter 1

The time immediately following Foresight’s defeat and the earth’s liberation can’t be measured in hours. The moments are fluid, swallowed by adrenaline and smiling faces and all-consuming relief. It doesn’t occur to Lio that the worst is yet to come, hovering on the horizon with the setting sun. The present is the last gift of the Promare, a final illuminating shelter before the darkness has time to settle. 

The cost of what they’ve lost doesn’t sink in for Lio until later that night. He sits bare-chested on a cot, lifeless and drained as Galo rifles through his closet. 

“How about this one?” Galo asks, pulling out a rumpled Burning Rescue t-shirt from a pile of firefighting gear. He holds it against Lio’s shoulders. The hem extends halfway down his thighs and the neck-hole droops below his collarbone. Galo sighs and turns back to the pile. “Maybe we should look through the women’s gear.”

Lio looks up. His head pounds behind his eyes. He’s never minded being alone, but now the silence is dizzying. He is shipwrecked on the shore of his own thoughts, desperate for the Promare to buoy him. The emptiness tastes like ash. 

He can only think in absences. He’s not the unquenchable fire coursing through his veins, urging him to push harder, burn brighter. He’s not the furnace glow of confidence that he is powerful enough to free his people from subjugation. He’s not the cacophony of ember warm voices, inciting his every move. Praising him when he is up, encouraging him when he is down. 

And if he’s not any of that, then who is he? 

“Who am I?” He asks aloud. It’s still too new to pose a question to his subconscious and not receive an answer. 

Galo pauses and turns around. His eyebrows push towards his hairline. “You’re…Lio Fotia. You feeling alright?”

Lio doesn’t respond. The air is thick and heavy, and his words melt together like snow under the new spring sun. 

“Lio?”

“Fine,” Lio says, weaving his fingers together to hide the trembling, “just tired.”

Galo tosses a helmet over his shoulder. It clatters against the floor and rolls beneath a table. “Lie down, I can figure this out on my own,” he says, planting his hands on his hips with a sigh. “I wonder if Aina has any spare clothes.”

Lio leans back against the wall and closes his eyes. He’s exhausted, but he doesn’t want to sleep. It’s been a lifetime since he experienced true stillness. He no longer knows what to expect from it.

The first week with the Promare was light. Clarity. Fears incinerated like a spark in the dry brush. Power beyond all belief. 

The first week without them is hell. 

The restoration effort fills the recesses of Lio’s brain during the day. Working towards a clear cut goal makes it easier to lose his boundaries, but the setting sun swallows it all. Dousing his morale like water on a campfire. Sometimes he wakes in the night and hears a voice. A mother soothing her child, kids comforting each other in the dark, Burnish talking to themselves to fill the ravenous quiet. Every time Lio is sure it’s the Promare, and every time he is met with a fresh wave of regret when he remembers they are gone. All that remains is a society sundered by ignorance and the parched, yellow earth. 

The Burnish walk around like zombies. They eat what they’re handed and huddle in pockets of shade, sweltering in the heat that used to kindle their spirits instead of their skin. None of them had prepared for a life without the Promare—probably by design—and the aftermath is agonizing. Without the voices smoking out their insecurities, the reality of what they’ve lost is focused in sharp definition. Their strength was nothing more than an illusion. They were never anything but vulnerable fools, wrapped up in lies like the emperor’s clothes. 

Lio watches the Burnish and wonders if he did the wrong thing by releasing the Promare back to their dimension. He can’t change it, so he doubles down his efforts to restore civilization. He’ll make it right, even if it means running himself into the ground. 

It’s not healing, but it’s a reason to face another night.

A week into rebuilding, Lio watches from a distance as Galo directs a group of men to clean out a towering pile of scorched plaster from the first floor of an abandoned apartment building. Thick clouds of black char hang over them like a lid. They’d have to wait for the rain to wash it all away if not for the paper face masks unearthed from a half-incinerated pharmacy two days ago.

Lio squints, studying the angle of the building. “Galo,” he says, too quietly to be heard.

He pulls down his mask to try again, but the air catches in his throat when he opens his mouth to speak. It burns, and for one of the first times in recent memory, that isn’t a good thing. He doubles over coughing, helplessly gasping for air. 

“Woah, woah. Careful now.” Galo’s suddenly there, his big hand on Lio’s back. “You gotta keep the mask on. The ash is crazy bad out here.”

Lio nods and grits his teeth. None of them mention that the ash is equal parts building residue and Burnish remains. A man digs his shovel into a sheet of fallen plaster and it cracks like a bone, splintered and white. Lio gags at the sound. The bile singes his throat. 

Galo sees the struggle and adjusts the mask over his mouth and nose for him. “There we are,” he says, patting Lio’s cheek, “good as new!” 

Lio swats his hand away. “The rebar,” he chokes when he trusts himself to speak, “the debris at the base is anchoring it. If we remove it first, the entire structure will collapse.”

“Hmm?” Galo plants his hands on his hips and tilts his head, studying the half-toppled skyscraper. “What makes you so sure?”

It’s a good question, but not one Lio has the patience for. He scratches at the edge of his mask. “Basic structural integrity.”

“Structural integrity?” A nearby man leans on his shovel. “I thought your kind were more interested in the breaking than the building.” 

“Hey,” Galo scolds lightly. “There’s no ‘your kind.’ Not anymore. We all gotta be on the same team if we’re gonna get anything done.”

“Yeah, yeah, don’t get your panties in a twist. It was just a joke.” The man rolls his eyes and turns to Lio. “Just a joke. Right, kid?”

Lio’s heart kicks against his ribs. Silence hangs over them like a blanket, suffocating and airless.

“Lio?” Galo prompts, forehead creased in anticipation. 

There should be a chorus of voices carrying the answer to Lio’s mouth. Instead, it’s just him, frozen with indecision. He shakes his head and takes a step backward. Broken glass crunches under his boots. “I-I’m going to see if Gueira and Meis need any help with medical.”

Galo watches him appraisingly. Lio doesn’t know what he’s searching for, but he must be satisfied with whatever he sees. “Okay, bud,” he says finally. “Hey, grab some water on the way, okay? You’re about as red as your uniform.”

Lio doesn’t answer. He’s too busy trying to parse the person he’s always known himself to be with the person he’s being. His thoughts float unmoored, stretching and warping in ways they never had the room to before. Into fear, into doubt. He rips the mask off his face as he walks. It’s hard enough to breathe as it is. He doesn’t remember the sun ever feeling so oppressive. A shiver works its way up his back despite the heat. 

The medical unit is hunkered in the shade of the ark, a charred field of makeshift beds fashioned out of every blanket and cushion they could salvage from the ship. It’s primarily inhabited by the Burnish. Former Burnish. Geuria and Meis have rallied together a station of healthcare professionals stocked with medical supplies, but the wounds are mostly psychological. Lio hovers over a woman with her hands gripped so tight to her scalp, blood streams down the back of her neck. “Quiet,” she chants, bent over her knees, rocking back and forth, “why is it so quiet?”

It’s early afternoon and Promepolis’ rebuild is in full swing. Thousands of people mill around them: talking, crying, moving, breathing. The quiet consumes it all like the cavernous mouth of space. Lio thinks if he tilts his head the right way, he might hear his brain rattling around his skull. “It’s not,” he says, the words sour. “You just have to listen.”

He sits alone at lunch, perched on an unearthed fire hydrant, observing. The restoration team is cordoned by an invisible boundary line between shifty-eyed normals and the despondent, strung out Burnish. Galo is right, but he’s naive. The release of the Promare isn’t enough to resolve ingrained prejudice. Decades of governmental oppression and propaganda have left an indelible mark on both sides. Lio takes a bite of sandwich. It’s turkey and cheese, but it tastes like sand. He folds it into his napkin for later. 

Lunch is followed by a meeting of the appointed officers of restoration. Scientists, engineers, and anyone deemed essential enough to the rebuild converge in the Burning Rescue firehouse. They sit shoulder to shoulder in a station meant to comfortably house six, not the near sixty that occupy it now. The electricity is out—has been since the circuitry was overloaded by the joint effort of Foresight’s ark and the Promare’s incendiary departure. Summer is in full swing, blowing in from the south with temperatures teetering closer to 40 with each passing day. They avoided the threat of immediate global demise, but the road to long-term environmental repair is still a long one. 

Remi sits in the front of the room, armed with a dry erase board and laser pointer. “Promepolis houses an electrical core 6 miles beneath the power plant.” He circles the red laser dot over a map taped to the wall. “Once we reset it, the Promer Energy representatives have estimated we can have power up in the majority of the city within 24 to 48 hours.” 

“Then why haven’t we done it already?” The police chief asks, folding his arms over his broad chest. “I’m sure one of my boys has the stamina to make it down and back.” 

“Unfortunately, distance isn’t the problem,” Remi taps a scribbled circle on the map. “The electrical overload has demolished the plant’s back-up generators. The pressure and temperature alone at that depth would be fatal.” 

A wave of quiet murmurs bubble through the crowd. 

“What about the Burnish?” A man’s voice rises above the din. “Aren’t they built to withstand high temperatures?”

“The Promare departed through the interdimensional rift.” Ignis’ clear voice anchors the attention of the room. “The Burnish are no more equipped to handle that level of heat than you or I.”

“But how do we really know that?” a woman chimes in, settling her clipboard in her lap. “Has anyone tried it? How can we prove the Promare are all gone.”

Aina pounds her first against the wall. “We aren’t risking someone’s life to test a crackpot theory!”

“It’s a matter of survival,” another woman interjects. “How are we meant to supply food and medicine without proper refrigeration? We can barely feed everyone as it is!”

Sweat beads in Lio’s hairline and sticks his shirt to his back. He needs to speak, but there’s ash on his tongue, a pulsing quiet echoing in his ears. He thinks of the woman from before, the red trail of blood streaming down her neck like a signal flare. 

“What’s one of theirs compared to the losses we’ve suffered?” A man asks. “This whole mess is their fault to begin with!”

“Enough!” Lio stands. There’s no great combustion. No internal accolades applauding his outburst, encouraging him to push harder, burn brighter. There’s heat—curled into his stomach like a fist—but it isn’t enough. Or maybe, the problem is that without the Promare,  _ he _ isn’t enough. 

“The Burnish fought back because we had to. Because _your_ government would have us locked up in cages and experimented on like animals.” Lio digs his nails into his palms. “We fight to live. We aren’t any different from anyone else. We’re human,” he says. The weight of it aches. “We’re only human.”

“So says the head of a Burnish terrorist group.”

  
  
“The only reason you’re not rotting in a jail cell is because Burning Rescue are a bunch of Burnish sympathizers!”

“Hey,” Galo’s loud voice fills the room. “We’re all on the same side here. No one’s gonna be made to put their life on the line for some electricity.” 

“Well,” Lucia interrupts, “maybe one person should.”

“Lucia,” Galo whines, “you’re making me look bad here. I just said—”

Ignis holds up a hand. “Hang on, Galo. Let her speak.”

Lucia smiles and unfurls a poster. “We found a charged fire suit in the rescue shuttle,” she says, smacking a sheet littered with unintelligible math equations on the wall. “It’s only at half battery, but it should be enough to make it to the core and back with some minor tweaking.” 

“I’ll go,” Galo steps forward, hands on his hips.

Lucia rolls her eyes to the ceiling. “The suit’s too small for you.”

“Then I will—” Lio says without thinking. 

“What!?” Galo yelps.

Lucia shrugs. “Suit yourself.”

"Hey, wait-" Galo begins. He cuts himself off when Lio glares at him from across the room. Eyes hard and booking no room for argument.

“Any objections,” Ignis stares pointedly into the crowd. Whispers mist the air, but nobody raises their voice to argue. “Then tomorrow,” he concludes, turning to Lio. “Have a good rest tonight. We’ll send you down early, before the surface has a chance to heat up.”

“Got it.” Lio nods. People are already shuffling out of the room. The details don’t matter, not if failure means one less Burnish to worry about. 

Lio lingers back, eyes on the floor to avoid any uncomfortable stares. He’ll borrow the energy plant’s map and study it tonight. Search for any short-cuts or alternate routes in case of an emergency. His physical prowess took a hit with the loss of the Promare, but what he lacks in pure strength he can make up for in strategy. At least, he hopes that’s the case. Reconstructing his identity post-Promare is like throwing darts at a catalog of personality traits and seeing what sticks. 

He’s pouring over the map—tracing his finger down a long corridor—when the squeak of metal chair legs across linoleum pierces the silence. Lio looks up, startled.

“Sorry,” Galo says. “Didn’t mean to scare you.”

Lio shakes his head and straightens. “You’re fine. I was just thinking.” 

“You think too much.”

Lio draws his knuckle to his lips and peers back down at the map. “Compared to you, maybe.”

Galo laughs and straddles a chair next to him. “Hey,” he waits until Lio’s eyes meet his. “You sure about this?”

Lio frowns. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“You don’t seem all there lately. You know, since the Promare…” 

“I’m fine,” Lio cuts him off. “I’m just…getting used to everything.”

“I know that. And I know you’re tough enough to handle it on your own, but—” Galo takes a deep breath. The air ekes out of his lips like a deflating balloon. “Urgh, why is this so hard!?” He scratches the buzzed side of his head so vigorously Lio almost reaches out to stop him. “It’s that. You know. Don’t take on more than you can handle, okay? People will come around. It’s just...it’s gonna take a little time.”

Lio looks down at his hands. The skin, white and paper-thin. He can trace his circulation as easily as the winding routes on the power plant map. “What makes you so sure? That they’ll come around, I mean.”

Galo knocks his fist against Lio’s shoulder. “Well, you managed to get me on your side, didn’t you?”

“That’s not exactly comforting coming from a guy that idolized Foresight.” 

Galo wilts. “Guess you got me there.” 

Lio huffs a short laugh despite himself. The tight grip on his lungs slowly unfurls.

“Oh, right,” Galo digs in his pocket and pulls out a bright pink hair tie. “Here,” he says, proudly displaying it. “Smuggled this for ya. Thought you might be more comfortable with your hair off your neck.”

Lio reaches out to take it, but Galo shakes his head. “I can do it. Turn around.”

Lio isn’t used to taking orders that don’t echo out of the recesses of his own mind, but whether from trust or pure exhaustion, he does as he’s told. Water has been on ration since they thwarted Foresight’s plot to abandon the earth to fiery disrepair. It's there, but they have no streamlined mechanism to filter and administer it without power. As a result, Lio hasn’t been able to shower in a few days. His hair has morphed into a greasy, sweat-soaked helmet. He hadn’t thought to be embarrassed about it until this moment, but Galo doesn’t mention it. He uses his hands as combs, gently loosening tangles and scratching his fingernails up Lio’s scalp. It takes everything in Lio not to shiver. 

“You know,” Galo says, sitting back to admire his work, “you really sweat a lot for a guy who used to be able to turn into a fire dragon.”

Lio clamps his eyes shut and lets his head droop backward. “The heat’s awful. How do you put up with it?”

“Nothing burns hotter than a firefighter’s spirit.” Galo settles his big hand on Lio’s forehead, then slides it down to his cheek. He clicks his tongue at whatever he finds there. “You need to drink more. None of you Burnish drink enough.” 

It’s the first time in a week Lio heard the words ‘you Burnish’ without his insides twisting from anxiety. “You don’t have to drink as much when your body isn’t actively expelling moisture.”

“That makes sense.” Galo fans Lio’s face with his hand. “But...can I ask you something?”

“Hm?” Lio hums. He’s already half-asleep, the gentle draft of Galo’s hand dousing his anxieties like a cold shower on a summer day.

“You guys...still had to pee, right?”

Lio opens his eyes. He blinks at the ceiling once before closing them again and drawing in a deep breath. “I’m going to pretend you didn’t ask that.”

Galo nods solemnly. “Probably for the best.”

Lio sighs and rests his head on his crossed arms. He doesn’t have the Promare wrapping around him like a warm hug, but he has this. Hot wind blows through the open windows. Lio sinks into sleep. His mind empties out, and for the first time in days, the silence feels like relief. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> more hurty on the way~
> 
> come chat aesthetic ho firefighter boyfriends with me on [tumblr](https://youremarvelous.tumblr.com) or [ twitter](https://twitter.com/marvyarts)


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> y'all know this is all fiction, right?

Lio is staring into space outside the power plant’s entrance when he hears Galo’s voice behind him. 

“Tell me you got some sleep.” 

It’s dark. The sun has just started to limn the horizon with a golden thread of light. It’s not much, but it’s enough to pick his cuticles by. “Some,” Lio says. It sounds better than the whole truth, which is approximately three hours, followed by tossing and turning, followed by ruminating over the power plant’s map by flashlight until his eyes burn.

His restlessness isn’t from nerves. Death stalked every corner when he was leading the Mad Burnish. Anticipating it has become as routine as brushing his teeth. But this mission is the first thing that’s made him feel like himself since banishing the Promare to their own dimension. Untangling himself from their influence is like falling into a black hole of doubt, but his desire to protect the Burnish is the one beacon of light that shines through it.

Galo stretches his arms over his head. “We can postpone if you need some time. I’m sure everyone would understand.”

“No,” Lio says. “I’m ready now.”

Galo stares into the side of Lio’s face. He reaches for his shoulder. “Lio—”

“Good morning, boys,” Lucia’s shrill voice interrupts them.

“Mornin’,” Galo parrots.

Lio nods at her, then the rest of the Burning Rescue team in her wake. 

“Morning?” Aina gripes. “Is that what we’re calling it?”

“Cap wanted to get an early start to beat the heat,” Varys reminds her.

“Yeah, yeah.” Aina yawns into her hand. “What difference is it going to make when he’s underground?”

“You can nap once we’ve got the power going,” Remi says.

“Speaking of,” Lucia smiles brightly. “I know what you’ve all been waiting for.”

She waves her hand and Meis and Gueira move through the small crowd, carrying a large metal briefcase between them. 

“Your mecha suit,” Lucia announces, hitting the release on the case.

The lock disengages with a hiss of dusty air. Lio and Galo peer in at the contents.

“Well,” Galo’s voice swings into a higher pitch, “it’s no Lio de Galon.” His disappointment is obvious. 

The suit looks like it was dragged out of the early 2100s. It’s a limp black bodysuit with gaudy orange affixed armor, more closely resembling a Halloween costume than a modern mecha. Lio steps into it. The armor buzzes and adjusts comfortably to his limbs. He feels like a walking traffic cone, but looks aside, the function seems to be mostly intact.

“She’s twenty years old but she’s still got some kick,” Lucia says. She takes a soldering iron to the control panel on the back. Sparks sizzle past her face, illuminating her safety goggles with acid green light.

“How long will the battery hold out?” Lio asks. 

“Three hours,” Lucia says, slapping the panel closed. “Give or take.”

“What happens then?” Gueira asks.

“Heatstroke, CO2 poisoning, paralysis, asphyxiation.” She shrugs. “Take your pick.”

Meis rounds on Lio. “You sure about this, boss?” 

Lio flexes his hand. The mechanized glove responds smoothly for a suit that’s been rusting in a spare closet for ten years. “Guess I’ll have to work fast.”

“Galo will descend with you as far as he can,” Remi tells him. “We don’t have any working communication devices, but if you run into trouble, you can use this.” He holds out a silver cylinder hanging from a carabiner. “It’s a  samarium–cobalt  grappling hook.” He indicates a button on the base. “Press this and the grapple will seek the base on Galo’s suit. There’s no guarantee it’ll help, but it’s something.” 

“Thanks,” Lio says and fastens it to his belt. 

Ignis pats him on the shoulder. “Ready?”

“As I’ll ever be,” Lio confirms.

Aina kicks him in the shin. “If you run into complications, forget it. Electricity isn’t worth losing your life over.”

Lio nods but he doesn’t strictly agree. He’s not interested in heroism. If this mission was solely about electricity, he wouldn’t have volunteered for it so quickly. Not for the sake of those who continue to subjugate his people for the crime of being different. His sacrifice is a matter of survival: a statement that the Burnish can serve society and deserve a place in it. It’s one he shouldn’t have to make, but decades worth of governmental propaganda and ingrained prejudice aren’t easily erased, even in the face of near-global destruction. Lio doesn’t care about being a hero, but he isn’t so conceited to think his life is worth more than the future and well-being of thousands. 

“Hey, enough with the worried faces!” Galo plants his hand on Aina’s head and tousles her hair. “This guy is tougher than he looks. He’s gonna make it, easy peasy!”

Aina slaps his hand away. “And who decided you’d be the one to go down with him?”

“Hey, we have a great rapport! Right, Lio?”

Lio is huddled over the power plant map with the head engineer. “We have experience working together, at any rate,” he says without looking up.

“See?” Galo rounds on Aina. “The guy basically loves me!”

“Clearly.” Aina rolls her eyes.

“Alright, everyone, enough fooling around,” Ignis interrupts. “The sun’s been up for a while now. Time to get this show on the road.” 

Lio does one last system check. He bends his knees and flexes his feet and hands. The suit responds smoothly, seamlessly adjusting to his muscle fluctuations. 

Lucia gives him a thumbs up. “All systems go!”

“We’re counting on you,” Remi says. 

Aina hugs him around the shoulders. “You’ll do great.”

Lio wishes he had her confidence. Somehow, it’s worse to know that only a week ago, he would have. 

Meis sighs and pats Lio on the shoulder. “Be careful down there.” 

“We’ll be waiting for you,” Gueira says.

Lio’s mouth tips into a small smile. “Thanks, guys.”

“Ready?” Galo holds out his fist.

Lio taps his knuckles against it. “Let’s do it,” he says.

Galo fist pumps the air. “That’s the spirit!”

The first mile is easy enough, more akin to a casual stroll than the first vital mission in Promepolis’ rebuild. Lio keeps his helmet down and the suit powered off. It’s hot and heavy to maneuver without gravity propulsion, but he wants to save every ounce of battery power for when the heat and pressure are uninhabitable. The chest lamp on his suit bobs with each step. His and Galo’s shadows stretch into the dark, flickering off the walls like ghosts. They don’t talk. Even at just a few stories down, the air is too thin to do anything but concentrate on walking. Still, Lio takes solace in Galo’s shoulder bumping against his, the comforting sound of his breathing.

Twenty minutes in, Lio’s lungs burn from the lack of oxygen. He rubs at his ears, trying to relieve the pressure. Galo misses a step beside him and stumbles against the wall to catch himself. “This is far enough,” Lio says. “I can make it the rest of the way on my own.”

“Aw c’mon,” Galo pants. He slumps on a stair despite his objection. “I can make it, like, another 100 meters at least.”

“Forget it,” Lio tells him, releasing the hood and engaging the airtight seal. Cool air floods the helmet, drying his sweat and filling his lungs with fresh oxygen. “I’m not carrying you back up again. The suit is heavy enough on its own.”

“Fine, fine,” Galo wipes his sweaty face with his forearm. “See you soon, yeah?” 

Lio nods. He starts back down the stairs, picking up the pace to two at a time once he’s confident he’s out of earshot. He’d forgotten to account for how dark it would be underground. Without Galo to center him, his paranoia flares like gasoline on a fire. His brain latches onto every distant rumble and spot of moss, morphing them into desperate cries, grasping charred hands begging for retribution.

Lio pauses. There’s someone whispering behind him. The hairs rise on the back of his neck. He spins around, frantically turning his head this way and that. His own shadow keeps catching the corner of his eye, pushing his heart into his throat. “Who’s there?” He asks the shadows. 

There’s no answer, and he doesn’t have the time to wait for one. Reluctantly, he keeps walking. Three more stories down, he realizes the whisper is his own voice, counting stairs. One. Two. Three. Four. He thought he’d been doing it in his head.

The steps deteriorate the further he descends. Mold crawls up from the floor, corroding the concrete and peeling the paint from the walls. Lio’s almost made it to the bottom when his foot misses a step. Or rather, he realizes as he falls, the step is completely gone. The last floor of the power plant is suspended—a series of industrial walkways spanning from one side of the cavernous room to the other. The scaffolding must have shifted from the explosion or maybe the heat. Either way, the platform is missing. Lio scrambles for something to slow his descent, but it’s impossible to find purchase in the dark. 

He lands on his back fifteen feet down. The ugly smack of dead weight meeting concrete echoes off the tall, sloped walls. Lio lies staring at the ceiling, gasping for breath, his head swirling with pain. Something snaps above him. He doesn’t think to be concerned about it until there’s another snap, then the resounding clang of metal colliding. He scrambles to his feet, but it’s too late. A twisted segment of steel platform plummets towards him. 

Lio instinctively lifts his hand to stop it. He remembers too late that he’s not a Burnish anymore. The Promare aren’t there to save him. The scaffolding lands hard, knocking him to the ground and crunching the right side of the suit and his arm with it. Lio screams through his teeth. Fire blooms down his arm and through his chest. His vision fades out around the edges and for a few dizzy seconds, he’s sure his consciousness will follow.

Time spins around him, aqueous and disjointed. His head throbs angrily, trying to piece it all together. His heart fluttering in his throat. Swinging scaffolding clanging in the dark. The smell of something metallic. He manages to cling to reality by concentrating on the pain, letting it envelop him like the warmth of a fire on a winter’s night. The suit’s low battery alarm pings in his ear. One hour left. Lio clenches his eyes shut and uses his good hand to push himself up. His chest lamp flickers ominously. 

He’s not about to give up here. Not after he’s finally foiled Foresight and those Freeze Force jerks. Not when the reputation of the Burnish depends on his success. “You can do this,” he tells himself because there’s no one else there to do it. The words crackle on his tongue like rain on hot asphalt. Lio runs his uninjured hand along the damage on his side. The breast piece is badly dented but still intact. His lungs are heavy as oil drums, but it’s probably from bruised ribs, rather than a puncture in the suit. For the first time since embarking on this mission, Lio is grateful that the suit is an older model. The new ones always prioritize lighter metals over more durable ones. 

He feels lucky despite the circumstances. It’ll be hell to climb the stairs with a shattered arm and aching chest, but it’s better than suffocating alone six miles underground. Lio bites his teeth into his lower lip and pulls himself to his feet. His head pounds behind his eyes, threatening to topple him to his knees. He manages to remain upright, if only from pure adrenaline.

Breathing is more difficult once he starts walking. The damage on the suit restricts his chest and each inhale pierces his lungs like a hot dagger. Sweat dampens his brow and drips down his cheek. His lips are going numb. Thankfully, he doesn’t have to go far before locating the core. It’s easy to identify, even in the inky black of the power plant. A towering cylindrical vessel in the center of the room, festooned with an assortment of gears and gauges that Lio might’ve been able to decipher if it was a week earlier. As he is now, he relies on the instruction of Promer’s chief engineer. 

“Red lever,” Lio whispers to himself. He finds it on the far side of the core, smaller than he expected—barely larger than his fist. He engages the lever and waits. There’s no pulse of energy, no flicker of lights or earth-shaking explosion. It’s anticlimactic, but he doesn’t have time to question it. The suit pings in his ear. Less than an hour to make it back to the surface. 

Lio heads for the staircase before remembering it collapsed moments earlier. He pauses. His thoughts are viscous, melting together like thick molasses. He stares into space for a few long seconds he can’t afford to lose. Black spots shimmer in the edges of his vision with every shallow breath. Finally, he remembers the map. There’s a breakroom with an auxiliary staircase that connects to the main one. 

Lio limps toward it, hopeful that his navigational skills can overpower the dense fog suffusing his brain. The breakroom is only a few meters away, but Lio is wheezing by the time he reaches it. For the first time, he considers the possibility that his ribs might be more than bruised as he traverses the small room and pushes into the stairwell. 

Climbing the stairs in this state is pure, unmitigated hell. His head throbs behind his eyes, threatening to roll right off his shoulders. He’s going to vomit. He needs to sit, but he can’t, so he clings to the wall with his good arm. His mouth hangs open, all decorum forgotten, desperately gasping for air. 

Two miles up, he doubles over with a cough that grinds his ribs together and speckles the glass screen of his helmet with bright red blood. He collapses on the landing, the sound of his breathing whistling in his ears. Bright colors coruscate behind his eyelids like fireworks. Every ounce of his body screams to give up. He’s reset the power. He’s proved the Burnish can contribute more than destruction to this new world. What does it matter if he makes it back now? His lungs convulse and blood bubbles in the back of his throat. 

He’s not hot, but cold sweat beads on his forehead and upper lip. His heart drums a death march in his ears. Somehow, silence bleeds through it. Aching, miserable silence. It’s hard to believe the Promare were ever real. It’s hard to believe he thought they’d change his life for the better. The most they did was feed him a sweet illusion of empowerment before leaving him here, alone, to pick up the smoldering pieces. 

They promised him power. They promised him happiness. They promised him a better life free from pain, but all they ever did was create more of it.

“I don’t need you,” Lio tells the Promare. Tells everyone. 

Even through the nauseating pounding in his head, the silence enrages him.

Moving again is his most stubborn act of defiance. Every step pulses a firestorm of agony through his veins. His legs tremble and threaten to give out. He keeps moving. Step. Step. Stumble. Step. The suit pings again. He’s lost track of how many times it’s been. The staircase stretches out in front of him, winding and endless as a circus funhouse.

The chest lamp flickers, or maybe it’s his vision. Lio’s knee hits the next stair and the rest of his body follows. His limbs don’t respond when he tries to move them again. They’re too heavy. His blood has been transmuted into mercury. Thoughts bob through his mind, half-formed and disjointed. The smell of motor oil. Autumn leaves as vivid as fire. The golden sun burning the horizon. A blazing spark in his chest. Warm lips against his. 

He blindly reaches for the grapple gun at his waist, fingers trembling and numb. His thumb grazes the button before the darkness swallows it all. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wanted to get this chapter out faster, but a series of familial emergencies stood in the way (including but not limited to a health-related emergency landing on an airplane. fun stuff.)
> 
> Please consider taking the time to leave a comment. Even the shortest one goes a long way in sustaining my morale. xo
> 
> Catch me on [tumblr](https://youremarvelous.tumblr.com/) and [twitter](https://twitter.com/marvyarts) if you wanna chat.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this continues to be a work of complete fiction

Hands on his face. An arm under his neck. Another, under his knees. Footsteps. Someone calling his name.

“Lio?” A voice bubbles up from the fog. 

Lio opens his eyes. He doesn’t remember closing them. “Sorry...I didn’t mean to...” He trails off. He forgot what he wanted to say. His head throbs. 

“Hey. Hi! Can you hear me?”

Lio groans and squeezes his eyes shut.

“I know, I know. Just hang on, buddy. Stay awake for me, okay?”

Lio can hear someone talking, but he can’t make sense of the words. The sky is over-saturated—bright blue like the hottest part of a flame. He’s falling, but he’s not scared. The warm breeze cradles his back, carrying him down and down into an endless abyss.

“No, no, no, no.” There’s a pinch on his leg, light tapping on his cheek. “Wakey wakey time now. You’ve gotta stay awake.”

Lio knows that voice. He knits his eyebrows together, trying to pull the answer from the swirling quagmire in his brain. “Galo?”

“Yes, good job! That’s great!”

Lio opens his eyes again. The world jumps and skips like a television with poor reception. “What happened?” His mouth is full of cotton. The words come out sticky and slurred, but Galo understands.

“You got all beat up. But we’re gonna get you fixed. Just hang tight for me, okay?”

Lio trembles despite the immense heat. His chest is filled with concrete. He wants to stay awake for Galo’s sake, but sleep drags at him like a tide. Something wet drips down his cheek.

“Don’t cry,” Galo pleads softly. Lio didn’t realize he had been. “Almost to the top. Just a little further.”

Lio can’t keep track of the order of things. Everything slips through his brain like water through fingers. One moment, darkness envelops him. The next, he’s being blinded by light. There’s yelling. Faces hover over him. Fingers pushed into his neck, then his wrist. A big hand covers his forehead.

“Lio? Lio, can you hear me? I need you to try to take a deep breath.”

Lio tries, but there’s no air here. Blinding pain pulses in his jaw and down his back. His chest convulses and the acrid taste of metal coats his tongue. 

“His lips are turning blue,” someone says. 

“Help me get the suit off.”

“Careful!” 

Lio feels himself being lowered to the ground. The movement pierces his chest like a bolt of lightning. He wants to scream, but he doesn’t have the breath. His heart batters against his ribcage.

The suit pings in Lio’s ear. ‘_ The battery _,’ he thinks groggily. He prepares for heat and pressure. Instead, the suit loosens around his limbs with a hiss like opening the tab on a can of soda. Cool air wraps around him. He realizes for the first time that his body is damp with sweat. 

“Oh god,” someone gasps to his left.

“He’s losing too much blood,” someone closer says.

That doesn’t seem right. He doesn’t remember bleeding. His whole face is tingling. His breath whistles between his lips.

“He’s going into shock. Captain?”

“The hospitals aren’t operational yet.”

“Well, we’ve gotta do something!”

“Take him to the Parnassus,” an unfamiliar female voice says. “There might be enough residual energy left to power the medical bay until the electricity returns.”

“Might be?”

“The power gauges blew when the system was overloaded. There’s no way of knowing for sure until we try it.”

“It’s better than nothing.”

Lio feels himself being lifted. Darkness laps at the edge of his vision. 

A big, warm hand squeezes his. “Hang on just a little longer, buddy.” It sounds like fear. 

Lio’s lungs are hollow. Blood bubbles in the back of his throat. One name bobs to the surface.

“Ga...lo.” 

  


* * *

  


Lio dreams of fire. A crackling orange tidal wave eating up the city. He remembers seeing it flash on marquees in Promepolis’ city center, footage from the Great World Blaze intercut with images of wild-eyed blazing Burnish and sobbing non-Burnish children huddled in charred clothes. Misleading iconography consumed the public conscious like a wildfire. It followed him everywhere. In anti-Burnish protests, in government officials demanding legislation for the Burnish to reveal their status as a means of public record. Lio would dig his nails into his palms and silently boil.

His consciousness resurfaces in stages. There are nurses. A tube winding out from his chest. The sharp smell of antiseptic. His chest cracks in half and he coughs. Hands on his shoulders. Painkillers tucked around him like a warm blanket.

Members of Burning Rescue mill through the room. They melt together in his mind. One moment, Aina is holding his hand in hers, petting his knuckles. Then he blinks and it’s Remi, silently reading, his chair pulled so close his knees brush the bed. Lucia fiddles with a palm-sized circuit board while Varys hovers behind her. Ignis sits in the far corner of the room, arms crossed, watching something on the television. 

He’s never alone, but their presence does nothing to comfort him. Lio’s heart is in his throat. Anxiety stalks his dreams. Hands reach out from the darkness and wrap around his neck, strangling him. Before, the Promare would soothe him with the promise of power. Whatever his problems, he had the tools to incinerate them. The quiet offers no answers. He knows something is wrong, he just doesn’t know what.

When he wakes again, it’s to a heavy chest, a faint, steady beeping in his ear. His mind is soggy with half-formed memories. A chair squeaks beside him. 

“Morning, sleepyhead.”

Galo.

Lio turns his head. There’s something over his mouth. He reaches to remove it, but his arm doesn’t move. He tries his left hand, instead. 

“Hey, hey, hey, leave it.” Galo grabs him by the wrist before his hand can reach his face. “It’s helping you breathe.” 

Lio’s arm falls back to his side. The movement jars his chest. Pain radiates down to his toes and a few piercing coughs erupt from his chapped lips. “You look terrible,” Lio wheezes when he catches his breath.

Galo’s hair is limp, listing to one side like a wilted sail. He’s wearing a shirt for once, but it’s rumpled and sweat-stained at the armpits. His eyes are bloodshot and rimmed with sleepless purple. He smiles, but it’s a cheap imitation of the smile Lio remembers. Something about it is wrong, but Lio can’t put his finger on why. 

“You don’t look so hot yourself. You’ve gotta stop almost dying on me. C’mere—” Galo tucks Lio’s mask under his chin and holds a glass of water to his lips. “Drink. Slowly.”

Lio didn’t realize he was thirsty until the water touches his tongue. He had never thought of water as delicious, but he gets it now. It’s not the taste but the body’s reaction to it, calming the fire in his throat and surging through his veins with a refreshing shiver. The Promare had made him forget. It’s too soon when Galo draws the cup back again. 

A nurse enters the room before Lio has time to complain. Galo must have rung for her, but Lio doesn’t remember seeing him do it. She checks his pulse and blood pressure, leans over machines and taps notes into a telepad. 

“You’re lucky,” she tells him, rattling off his injuries like she’s reading a grocery list. A comminuted fracture of the tibia, fractured clavicle, mild concussion, multiple broken and bruised ribs, collapsed lung, and a ruptured spleen. Apparently, when the suit was dented on impact, it had stabbed through his abdomen. Lio hadn’t even realized. 

Part of his spleen was removed and his arm has been set with pins. He should be able to gain back full mobility with physical therapy. His lung will improve with time, but he’ll always be at risk of it collapsing again. He’d technically died on the table, but through some miracle, they’d been able to revive him. Lio doesn’t say that there’s a second time for everything, but he thinks it. 

“You lost a lot of blood,” the nurse tells him. “And you’ll probably have trouble breathing for a little while. The doctor will come in soon to go over your treatment plan.” She doesn’t mention how long he’ll need to stay in the hospital. He takes that as a bad sign. 

When she leaves, Lio looks around the room for the first time. The floor, walls, and ceiling are all composed of the same light grey steel. Every instrument in the room is affixed to the wall or welded to the floor, as if to prevent them from moving. Even the track lighting on the ceiling is energy-efficient fluorescent blue lights commonly used in spacecrafts. “What hospital is this?” He asks.

Galo sits back and props his feet up on Lio’s bed. “It’s the medical bay on the Parnassus.”

“The Parnassus?”

“Aina’s sister suggested it. You were bleeding out and there was enough power here to get you through surgery.”

The words settle into Lio’s brain like a wet blanket over a fire. The Parnassus. Screams echo in his ears, Burnish begging to be spared as they’re ripped from their families. Empty eyes and hollowed cheeks. Burnish bodies, disintegrated into thick plumes of black smoke, billowing from the ship’s air shaft. They’d managed to save the majority of them, but not everyone was so lucky. Lio’s mouth tastes like ash. He clenches his fingers into a fist. 

“So I’m being healed off the backs of the Burnish.”

Galo sits up and plants his feet back on the floor. He holds his hands in front of his chest as if to fend off the accusation. “No! I mean...maybe? I hadn’t really thought of it like that,” he admits. “But..but it was only at first! Power’s been up for a week now. It just—” Galo opens his mouth, then closes it again, uncharacteristically hesitant. “It wasn’t safe to move you yet.”

Something about the way he says it gives Lio pause. People are transported from one hospital to another all the time. Lio is badly injured, but not enough to necessitate staffing and supplying energy to an otherwise abandoned ship. 

He scours his memory for any clues, but the events of the last few days are awash in a sea of blood loss and painkiller induced delirium. He remembers pain. He remembers hollow lungs. He remembers Burning Rescue bobbing around him like buoys. He’s missing something, a conspicuous blank spot scribbled into his brain like a vandalized photo. 

He screams into the void of his mind, but only the quiet answers back. He screws his eyes shut and pushes away the silence until he finds his own voice. When it finally hits him, it’s like the light of clarity unfurling a rope through the dark.

He’s not missing something. 

He’s missing someone. 

“Where are Meis and Gueira?”

Galo grimaces and scratches at the back of his head. “Just concentrate on healing for now, okay?”

  
  
“Galo,” Lio demands, as firmly as he can with what feels like a twenty-pound weight on his chest. “Tell me.”

Galo looks away and runs a hand through his hair. “If I do, you have to promise me you won’t…” he trails off and rubs at his eyebrow with his thumb. “Don’t panic, okay? I’m not supposed to let you get stressed out.”

The request alone has Lio’s heart fluttering in his throat.

Galo sighs and slumps forward, his hands folded between his knees. “Promepolis held a public forum once the power came back. Just to restore order until they can vote on new government officials. Figure out housing, who has rights to what, food distribution, you know, that kind of thing. And they...well…” His cheeks fill with air and he exhales noisily. “Everything they decided is temporary, okay? Know that going in.” 

Lio digs his fingers into the mattress so hard his knuckles turn white. “What about the Burnish?” 

Galo wipes non-existent sweat from his forehead. “They’re fine. They are, but...it was...decided to lock up the Burnish with any known criminal history until a proper hearing can be held.”

Lio’s heart sinks to his stomach. He swings his feet over the side of the bed. The tube in his chest pulls painfully. He gasps and coughs convulsively into his hand—black spots shimmering across his vision—but he keeps moving towards the door. His knees buckle when his feet hit the floor. He collapses on all fours, tears dotting the corners of his eyes as overwhelming agony blooms through his arm and down his abdomen. A machine starts wailing with a high-pitched, metallic ring. 

“Hey!” Galo’s hands are on his back. “Hey! Stop!”

Lio’s chest heaves with coughs. He grits his teeth, but stubborn as he is, he can’t will his body to keep moving. “Their ‘crime’...is fighting against...an unjust system!” He spits, swallowing desperate lungfuls of air through his mouth. “The world...wouldn’t exist anymore...if not for them!”

“I know! I know that! And we’re working on it!” Galo rubs his back, frantically looking up at the readings on the machines then back down to Lio. “Please, _ please _ get back in bed. Aina’s gonna kill me.”

“Who else?” Lio demands. He lets Galo prop him against his chest, if only because he’s too dizzy to fight it.

“Just Aina! Well, Cap might kill me, too. Maybe even—”

“No,” Lio shakes his head. When he swallows, it tastes like copper. “Who else...have they imprisoned.”

“Just them,” Galo says. “Just Meis and Gueira.” 

“And me?” Lio asks. Galo’s silence is answer enough. 

The world narrows into a pinprick of light. Lio leans his head back against Galo’s shoulder.

“It doesn’t matter.” Galo brushes Lio’s hair from his forehead. “By the time you’re well enough to leave the hospital, this will have all blown over. Cap is already assembling a counter vote.”

Lio doesn’t hear him. He’s never felt as stupid as he does now. He should have predicted this. The non-Burnish don’t care about integrating society. Imprisonment will start with the Mad Burnish and ripple out with no one to stop them. Only this time, they don’t have the Promare to defend themselves.

Lio refuses to believe this is who he is without the Promare. A naive fool blindly believing in the goodness of people.

There’s a nurse in the room. Galo tries to be discreet about bracing Lio across the shoulders to keep him from fighting, but he can’t do anything about it, anyway. His limbs are leaden, his chest caving into an airless, vacuous void. Something is inserted into his iv. Warmth floods his veins. 

“Trust me, okay?” Galo whispers into his ear. “I’m on your side here.”

“You don’t get it,” Lio pants. Exhaustion pulls at his eyelids. He wants to tell Galo that trust is a luxury the Burnish can’t afford, but he doesn’t have the breath for it. 

“I do,” Galo insists, lifting Lio’s limp body into his arms. “I’m trying to.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you, everyone, so very much for your comments!! it seriously was so helpful in helping me power through writing. this may end up being 5 chapters....but we'll see what happens. pretty sure I'm going to end up serializing this au because there is still so much to explore that doesn't concisely fit into this particular story. so idk, I guess let me know if you're interested in seeing more from this post-canon universe. 
> 
> as always, you can catch me on [tumblr](https://youremarvelous.tumblr.com/) and [twitter](https://twitter.com/marvyarts)


	4. Chapter 4

Nurses filter in and out of Lio’s room. Checking blood pressure, injecting clear liquids into his IV. They’d placed him under sedation to prevent further episodes. Apparently, his little escape act came at the cost of a partially collapsed lung and a handful of popped stitches. Galo holds vigil over his bed. No one blames him for Lio’s condition outright, but the evidence is there in the sidelong glances. 

Galo doesn’t notice. He sits with his arms folded over his chest, drumming his heel into the ground. Fighting fires is easy. The objective is clear cut: identify the problem and extinguish it. Dousing the intolerance born from decades of government lead propaganda and dehumanization is something else entirely. It’s a thought experiment he doesn’t have the patience for. Watching Lio cling to life, a bundle of purple skin and broken bones, Galo’s own uselessness is palpable.

Day fades into night and back again and all he can do is track the rise and fall of Lio’s chest. He doesn’t remember ever spending so much time in silence. In stillness. He’s scared to let his thoughts stretch to meet the void. It’s late afternoon on the second day of Galo’s vigil when Heris slips in from the hall. The squat summer sun glints off medical equipment and dusts the back wall with a cascade of hazy stars. 

“Galo,” she says with a cool edge of relief, “Aina said I’d find you here.”

Galo perks up and pulls his hand from Lio’s. He’d been holding it for the better part of an hour and his palm is slick with sweat. He rubs it off on his thigh. “Is everything okay?”

“Fine,” Heris says, settling onto a stool at the head of Lio’s bed. “She told me to tell you to stop ignoring her texts.”

Galo scrambles to pull his phone from his pocket. It’s been buzzing intermittently for hours, but he’d barely noticed it. Too preoccupied with staring into Lio’s face, willing his body to mend faster. He jams the home button and the screen lights up with a flood of messages, all from Aina. Requests for status updates and appeals for him to return to work devolve into blatant threats and choice four-letter words as the time stamp closes in on the current hour. “Ah, man—” Galo groans, thumbing through another stack of texts—“she’s super pissed, huh?” 

Heris laughs, a short burst. She covers her mouth with her fingertips. “That’s just how she shows her love.”

  
  
“If you say so,” Galo slumps, pocketing his phone again. 

Heris tilts her chin to her chest, weaving her hands together in her lap. Silence settles into the space between them. She opens her mouth, then closes it again, teeth clenched into her lower lip. “Galo, I…" she pauses, considering. "Aina would kill me for saying this, but don’t...don’t hurt her, okay?”

Galo flushes.

“I guess that doesn’t mean much coming from me.” Heris shakes her head as if to chase the thought from the room. She meets Galo’s eyes and smiles. The sunlight glints off her lenses. “Go home. Rest. I can keep an eye on things here.” Her tone is soft, but it’s not a suggestion. Something about that disparity reminds him of Aina, and maybe that’s why he listens. 

Public transportation is low on a long list of damaged infrastructure in need of repair, so Galo walks back to the firehouse. He kicks debris up the sidewalk—hands stuffed in his pockets—watching the sky. It’s pure blue for the first time since the rift closed. Staring at the cloudless expanse, it’s easy to believe the city isn’t lying in shambles at his feet. 

He stretches his arms over his head, rolls his shoulders till they crack. His brain is overstuffed. The last week hovers over his memory like a summer storm. Kray, the Mad Burnish, Lio. Galo always thought he knew right from wrong. Now, the man he had idealized for years is behind bars, and the man he had pursued as his greatest adversary is one of his most trusted allies. It’s like the sun rising on a road he had only ever navigated by candlelight. Galo scratches at the hem of his compression sleeve. His moral compass spins, trying to make sense of it all. 

He picks up his pace, desperate to reach the fire department. There’s never much space for contemplation between Lucia’s experiments, Varys’ impromptu basketball matches, and Aina and Remi’s arguments. Galo takes the steps two at a time when he reaches it, bursting into the main room with his foot against the door. “Guess who!” He announces. No one turns to greet him, so he throws his arms in the air, waves them around for good measure. “Helloooo! Didja miss me?” 

“The shower did,” Aina replies without missing a beat. She’s sitting with her foot in the chair, knee under her chin, peering over something on her tablet. 

Varys hovers in the middle of the room, knees bent, aiming a basketball at the hoop affixed to the far wall. “How’s Lio?” He asks, shooting the ball into a perfect arch. The net swishes. 

Not quite the fanfare Galo expected, but at least it’s acknowledgment. He drops his arms to his sides and trudges to the fridge. “Uh...fine, I guess.” 

“You guess?” Aina looks up, eyes pinched with worry.

Galo spoons day-old chili into a bowl. He takes a bite before heating it. “I...might have let it slip about Meis and Gueira.” 

“Galo!” Aina scolds.

“How did he take it?” Remi asks around a sip of coffee. 

“I mean—” Galo leans against the counter and licks cold sauce off the spoon—“not super great. He tried to leave the hospital.” 

Aina balks. “In his condition?”

Remi sets his mug down. “Could be worse. At least he can’t turn into a huge flaming dragon anymore.”

“I’ll miss that dragon,” Lucia sighs.

Galo’s skin prickles. He remembers the heat, the worry that had burned even hotter. He pops his chili into the microwave. The low whirr drowns out the grumble of half-hearted retorts. Lucia turns back to her laptop, Aina her tablet. Galo polishes off his lunch and wilts dramatically across the department’s well-worn leather couch. It’s been days since he’s truly rested, torn between the Promepolis restoration project, council meetings, and hovering nervously around Lio’s bedside like a moth around a flame. His back sings from the change in orientation.

He crosses his arms over his chest and closes his eyes. For a moment, he’s tempted to catch a rare hour or two of sleep. Exhaustion settles behind his eyelids, thick as twilight, but Lio’s face burns through it. Lio who nearly died twice in his effort to save the people who can’t agree on the fact of his humanity. Lio whose only reward was having his best friends thrown behind bars, with the promise that he would follow. 

The world isn’t fair, but Galo can make it right. Or at least, he can try to. He forces his eyes open again, chest burning with renewed enthusiasm. “Does anyone know where Ignis is?”

“Down at the police station,” Varys replies, followed by another soft swish of a perfect net ball. “Trying to convince the officials to release Meis and Gueira till the council meeting tonight.”

“Still?”

Remi leans back in his chair and crosses one leg over the other. “Releasing two known figureheads of a prominent terrorist faction is a hard sell. Even if you have buddies in the force.”

Aina shakes her head. “It’s not right. If anyone deserves to be called a terrorist, it’s Kray.”

“You can’t blame people for being cautious,” Remi reasons. “Lio might’ve run the game differently, but the Mad Burnish don’t exactly have a pristine reputation. It’s only been thirty years. People don’t forget that easily.”

Aina slaps her palms on the table and stands. The chair clatters to the floor behind her. “Whose side are you on, anyway?”

Remi grips his coffee cup in both hands to steady it. “The victims’.”

“And you don’t think the Burnish qualify?”

“I never said—” 

“Guys!” Galo shouts, climbing to his feet. “It’s not about sides. A firefighter’s burning soul surmounts all—”

“Please, not another speech.” Remi pinches the bridge of his nose.

Aina opens her mouth to agree, but a piercing wail steals the words from her tongue. Blue and red lights beam across the wall, circling the room like a circus top. Aina cranes her head at the ceiling buzzer, then the flashing beacon over the door. “You can’t be serious.”

“Is the alarm malfunctioning?” Remi asks. 

Lucia’s hands flutter across her keyboard. “Triangulating—” She says, leaning so close to the laptop screen her nose grazes it. “There,” she says, pointing at a green pixelated triangle glowing through a digitized map of the city. “Heat signature detected: downtown, East district. Looks like—” she taps a few keys and the image sharpens—“Patton Street.”

Varys squints at the screen, his hands on his hips. “Isn’t the police station on Patton?” 

“Perfect,” Aina groans, already sprinting to her locker. “Just what the city needs: a potential arsonist.”

“What?” Galo yelps. “Arson?”

“Maybe someone burned their toast,” Varys offers, stepping into his bunker pants. It’s a wishful suggestion, but not a far fetched one. Aside from Burnish flames, burnt toast accounted for a good forty percent of false alarms occurring post-Promare. Even after the city-funded toaster PSA. 

Remi slams his locker shut and runs towards the truck. “Let’s hope that’s the case.”

It’s not burnt toast. 

  
  
Pillars of black smoke billow towards the sky in the distance, hovering over the police station like a scavenging hawk. The firetruck barrels down the road to meet it. “Think this is gonna require more than a lecture on responsible usage of kitchen utilities,” Varys says, turning to climb into his mecha. 

“No kidding,” Aina mutters under her breath. Then, louder, “doesn’t the station have an automatic hydro system?”

Lucia pulls a lever then spins her chair to a circuit of candy-colored buttons. “They must have been deactivated by the rift.”

“Well, can’t you reactivate it?” Galo shouts, already pulling out the tubs of cooling liquid.

Lucia’s smile reaches her ears. “What do you think I’ve been doing?” She dashes off a code into her keyboard. The screens flash with acid blue. “I’ve got this whole city bugged for remote access.”

“I wouldn’t brag about that.” Remi rubs at his temples.

“Not in earshot of the police,” Varys agrees.

  
  
“That’s not what I—” Remi shakes his head and buckles himself into his mecha. It’s not the time for debates on the legality of unconsented invasions of privacy. He’ll save that lecture for when the city government isn’t rotting from the inside out. 

Lucia jams a button with her elbow. The decorative moulding skirting the sides of the police station sinks into the brick facade, revealing a strip of wide barrel water cannons. The cannons emerge with a mechanized hiss, locking into a staggered pattern and erupting with water. Golden steam suffuses the air. The water doesn’t extinguish the fire completely, but it suppresses the surface smoke enough to allow for better assessment of possible escape routes. 

Aina swoops her hovercraft through the fog. She pivots around the scorching building, circling as low as visibility allows. Flames lick at the wings, bubbling the vinyl FDPP logo on the tail, but she pushes lower, searching for an opening in the blaze. 

She’s forced to admit defeat after three full revolutions. Fire rings the entire station, clenching the walls like a smoldering fist. The arrangement suggests the blaze was started from outside the building. Aina pushes the information aside for the moment, shifting her elevation to survey the station from above. “All sides are compromised,” she reports. “We’re going to have to clear people from the roof.”

Remi frowns. “How many inside?”

  
  
“Twelve on the second story, right quadrant.” Lucia rolls to a loading schematic of the police station and trails her finger across the screen, flipping through outlined layers of infrastructure. “Varys, the center support beam needs reinforcement. Remi, I’m sending you coordinates to the roof access.”

“Got it,” Varys confirms.

  
  
“Roger that,” Remi echoes.

Galo holds his hands out by his sides, swinging his head expectantly from right to left. “What about me?”

“You’re back up,” Lucia says simply. “Go outside and play crowd control till we need you.” She pulls a lever and Remi and Varys’ mechas release from the side of the truck, unfolding on the street like origami. They bound toward the building, scaling the walls with ease. 

Galo watches, hands gripped into fists.

“Galo—” Lucia jerks her thumb towards the door, eyes glued to her computer—“out.”

Galo sighs and lumbers out the back. He moves toward the small crowd forming in the street, raising his arms to corral people to the far sidewalk. “Alright, everyone. Let’s take it back,” he shouts. “Back, back. I need everyone off the road.”

Bodies wend to the sidewalk, steered by the hot wind, eyes fixed on the blaze. Ravenous flames grasp at the sky. The fire flickers like a dilapidated film reel, melting the boundary between past and present.

“Is it them?” Someone whispers. “Are they back?” 

“Those Mad Burnish guys were in there, right?” Another voice bubbles from the crowd.

“Do you think they did this?”

Sweat drips down the back of Galo’s neck, his heart skips into his throat. It would be so easy to get angry, but denying their fear won’t eliminate it. If he wants to be heard, he has to listen first. It’s the only way he’ll ever know how to reach them. “We don’t know the source yet,” Galo says, hands on his hips, “but whatever it is, you can rest assured that Burning Rescue will take care of it. We’ll protect Promepolis with the power of our fiery spirits!”

“Oh, man,” A voice raises above the low din. “You’re that guy who made the speech about burning souls at the council meeting, aren’t you?”

“What is he, an idiot?” 

A surge of giggles eclipses the haze of paranoid whispers.

It’s not the result Galo was aiming for, but it’s better than the brushfire of accusations eating up all rationality. He scratches his scalp with a stilted laugh, turning back to the police station just in time to see a piece of awning break off and crash into the center of the street. Flaming debris scatters from the sky like ticker tape. Someone screams. People take off in all directions, tripping over themselves in their scramble to reach safer ground.

A woman hangs back, a child clutching her leg. She nods wearily at Galo before wrapping an arm around his side, pulling him in for a brief embrace. “Thank you,” she whispers, recoiling with an apologetic bow. “Thank you,” she says again, tugging the child down a side street.

Galo watches her go, cheeks warm, reeling in the wake.

In the end, it’s a straightforward rescue. Natural flames are more predictable than those of Burnish origin. At the very least, they can’t take animal form and transmute into weapons. The worst of the damage is surface level. Galo wishes he could say the same for the rest of the city.

Aina lands the rescue pod and Galo hurries over to pry the door open. “Is everyone okay?” He asks, scanning the occupants for any obvious injuries.

Ignis is the first to exit. “Fine, thanks to the quick rescue.”

“Learned from the best, Cap,” Varys says. He steps out of his mecha and the limbs retract, collapsing into a neat, metal cube.

A cluster of officers filters from the pod next, jerking Meis and Gueira out by their biceps. They’re shackled around the wrists, location monitors strapped to their ankles, but it’s nothing compared to Kray. He’s sequestered by cops, chained on all sides, a stun gun aimed at his head and a muzzle secured over his mouth. 

Aina climbs out of the hovercraft’s cockpit, eager to share her hunch now that the immediate threat has been neutralized. “Cap!” She shouts, jogging to Ignis’ side. “What do you think happened back there?” 

Ignis brushes ash from his uniform. “Foul play, I’d say. The fire was started from the outside, that much I know for sure.” He tucks his thumb into his back pockets. “We’ll have to do a scan of the perimeter, see if we can’t locate a footprint or two. Think you can handle that, Lucia?”

A wasp buzzes around his head, typical in every way aside from its neon green coloring. “You got it!” Lucia’s voice echoes from it, high-pitched and distorted.

Remi wipes his glasses on the hem of his shirt. “Any guesses as to the identity of the perpetrator?”

Ignis casts a sidelong glance at the officers. They hover over Gueira, whacking the back of his knees with their batons until he slumps to the ground next to Meis. “No,” Ignis says, clenching his fingers into his palm, “but I think I might know their motive.”

“Someone’s trying to frame the Burnish,” Aina says. It’s not a question.

Ignis frowns, so slight it’s almost imperceptible. “We won’t know for sure until we catch the bastard.”

“Uh, guys,” Lucia emerges from the firetruck. “We’ve got a problem.” She holds up her arm. Her wrist computer flashes with alternating blue and red. 

“Another fire?” Remi asks, forehead creased in disbelief. 

Galo is in the middle of staring down the police officers, using his body as a barricade between them and Meis and Gueira. He snaps to attention. “Huh!? Again!?”

“Yeeup,” Lucia confirms, “and that’s not the worst part.”

Aina’s phone chimes. She pulls it from her back pocket and quickly scans the screen. “The Parnassus?”

“What!?” Meis and Gueira shout in unison. 

Lucia shrugs a shoulder. “Told ya.”

“Alright, everyone in the truck,” Ignis directs. “We’ll debrief on the way.” 

Galo sprints to his seat, images of Lio, sedated and injured, pale as a bedsheet where he isn’t stitched up and purple, wringing his stomach like a damp towel. He stares into space as Ignis runs down the Parnassus’ schematics, nails gripped into his knees so hard his knuckles turn white. He clamps his eyes shut and sends a message into the universe.

  
‘ _ Hang in there, buddy _ .’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I suck and I know it and I'm sorry. 
> 
> But 3 things: 1. I was 3k into writing this chapter before realizing I needed to completely start over and take it in a different direction, 2. my living situation right now is hell and doesn't allow for either quiet or sleep, both of which I need to brain properly, and 3. Galo's perspective lskjdfhalksdjf. I love him but kjsdhflkasdjf. 
> 
> Excuses aside, thank you all so so SO much for your kind comments on the last chapter! Sincerely, thank you. With life as it's been (not fun), the encouragement really helped me pull myself together and buckle down on writing this. I'm moving again in January (yay!!) which makes things kinda hectic, but I will put forth all my effort to get the next chapter out faster than this one. 
> 
> As always, you can find me on [tumblr](https://youremarvelous.tumblr.com/) and [twitter](https://twitter.com/marvyarts)
> 
> And if you're wondering: yes, all the members of Burning Rescue /did/ star in the toast PSA. Remi still has the toast costume crammed in the back of his locker. 
> 
> If I don't get a chapter out before, I hope everyone has a wonderful holiday!! Here's to a happier 2020 xo


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